Category Archives: Books

Book updates

Finished the following books:
Great book on investing! Very easy to read and short too! Joel Greenblatt describes a “magic formula” to rank stocks (based on two criteria: Return on Assets and Earnings yield (reverse of P/E!), rank stocks with higher numbers for both. Add the two ranks and rerank based on sum of the [...]

Books: Two Travelogues

One fictional:

The other factual:

Against all Enemies

Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror is a fascinating account of events that happened inside the White House before and after 9/11 and how the focus shifted from fighting the terrorists to war with Iraq. I got to know about this book after watching Clinton’s interview with Fox News. where he repeatedly [...]

Book Update

Haven’t been updating the blog recently… Here are some books I read in the last few weeks…

A View from the TOP (Audio Book) by Zig Ziglar. A very good audio programme about achieving significance in all aspects of life - Health, Finance, Relationships, Spirituality. This may be the first time I encountered someone being so [...]

Book updates

From Personality Dev books to pure fiction: These were too difficult to resist:

Angels and Demons
and
The Da Vinci Code. I really liked the way the story is told. I wonder why any author cannot create such novels based on Indian Mythologies, Ramayan, Mahabharat ? Telling the story of someone trying to find out the Ashwatthama’s [...]

Fair Use and Google Book Search

There is a big copyright violation fight going on between Copyright Holders and Google about what is fair use and what is a violation. I came across a great article by Cory Doctorow on this issue. He is firmly on the side of Google on this issue and lists the three main points of contention:

Google [...]

Book update

Here are the books read in the past few weeks:
Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell is about snap judgements (the author terms this as thinslicing)that we make about things, people. It gives a lot of examples where people make judgements about certain objects (e.g. whether a statue is genuine [...]

Book updates

This blog is turning into just a list of books I am reading. Anyway, here are some new books read in last month or so:
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done — by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan (Re-read).
Working with [...]

Books read (or listened to)

Here is a quick list of books read/listened in last few weeks. I will write a brief summary/review for each of them as and when I have the time…
The Psychology of Achievement: Develop the Top Achiever’s Mindset
21 Secrets to Success
Lead The Field
The Psychology of Winning
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
Next on [...]

Eat That Frog

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less TimeEat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
is a book about getting more things done in the (limited) time that you have. This book is written by Brian Tracy who is a self-made millionaire. The basic premise of the book is that to be more productive, you have to find out that one task that you need to do which will make a difference (and not the task that you feel like doing) and take steps to do it right away with urgency. The book has a lot of good ideas to help you find your biggest frog and eat it!

Recommended for the perpetual procrastinators (yes, that means you!)

Books: The Innovator’s Dilemma

The Innovator’s Dilemma is a great book by Clayton M. Christensen. The central theme of the book is that unless specific measures are taken, disruptive innovation causes highly successful businesses to fail. This is not because they are badly managed or are technically incompetent, but because they get pressurized by their existing customers and investors [...]

Books: The Automatic Millionaire

The Automatic Millionaire (by David Bach) is a little book telling a simple and automatic formula to become a millionaire. It talks about saving money (by sacrificing costly lattes, cigarrettes etc. if needed), effects of compounding (really dumbs down the argument).
Here is a brief sumary of the book:
* Save at least a few dollars [...]

Currently reading…

Currently the following books are on my reading shelf:

How To Make Money In Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad is written by William J. O’Neil, who is the founder of Investor’s Business Daily. In addition to pitching IBD (which is good BTW), he outlines his method of picking the winning stocks to [...]

Currently Reading (Feb 2005)

Currently reading:
In an Uncertain World by Robert E. Rubin and Jacob Weisberg.
Autobiographical book by Robert Rubin which sketeches his early years, a long career with Goldman Sachs, White House, The Treasury.
(to be resumed after my India trip)
Getting Things Done by David Allen
A self-help book about high productivity.
Learning [...]

What your CEO wants You to know…

Came across an article in Fast Company about Dr. Ram Charan and got hold of two books by Dr. Ram:
What the CEO wants you to know and Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
I just finished “What CEO…” and it’s filled with countless little gems in very easy to understand terms. Dr. Ram Charan grew [...]